Post-Howard Liberals in policy drift

Last Monday if you had been on the 20th floor of 385 Bourke Street, Melbourne, diagonally opposite what used to be called the Myer Emporium, you would have witnessed an unusual event. You would have had an opportunity to tune in to a politician talking about long-term policy beyond the demands of the news cycle.

Greg Hunt
, the federal Coalition’s environment spokesman, had set himself the task of envisaging Melbourne’s evolution to 2050 and how it might make best use of its assets. Bear in mind the southern city is set to overtake Sydney in population by 2037, according to some estimates.

Central to his vision for Melbourne, or other Australian cities for that matter, was the establishment of a bipartisan and integrated planning commission that would not usurp the role of government, but would draw on the “best thinkers" to provide advice to the government of the day unshackled by party political or bureaucratic constraints.

Hunt’s series of talks – aimed at lifting his profile – sets him apart from many of his colleagues, including his leader,
Tony Abbott,
whose relentlessly negative campaigning may be suited to opposition but risks leaving him unprepared for the task of actually governing.

As one of Abbott’s colleagues put it to the Weekend Financial Review: “Tony’s [hyperactive] public persona mitigates against long-term policy development."

Abbott is said to be aware of this shortcoming but it is not clear whether a “one-trick pony" is capable of changing its ways.

We saw hints of this in the 2010 election when Abbott fumbled questions on broadband and, more damagingly, failed to ensure that costings of his election promises stood up to scrutiny. An $11 billion “black hole" was revealed after the election.

As Hunt was outlining his vision for his home city (he represents the outer Melbourne electorate of Flinders),to an event organised by the non-partisan Committee for Melbourne, Abbott was arriving in town for several days of campaigning on the carbon tax issue, including a strained discussion with ABC Radio’s Jon Faine.

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Abbott was asked repeatedly by Faine whether his “direct action" climate plan amounted to a version of the “magic pudding" in which the government was responsible for open-ended commitments for carbon abatement, as opposed to the main polluters themselves, either through a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, or a combination of both.

That is assuming the Coalition is serious about its pledge to reduce emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, reliant in part on storing carbon in soil and vegetation, a practice that is not yet sanctioned internationally as a legitimate means of carbon storage.

Listening to Abbott on Faine you wondered whether he fully grasped his party’s policy, cobbled together by Hunt as a means of straddling a Coalition divide between those who believe in the science, those who are sceptics, like Abbott, and deniers on the loony right. Mysteriously, a transcript of the Faine interview was not posted on the Abbott website, as would normally be the case. An Abbott spokeswoman told me there had been a “problem with the recording".

This brings us to the question of the Liberal Party policymaking processes, which become more relevant as the Gillard-Wayne Swan government’s slide risks becoming a rout.

Abbott’s negative campaign, helped by the ineptitude of a government that advances a policy initiative affecting every Australian household without actually explaining in detail how it will work, has contributed to an erosion in Gillard’s poll numbers.

Gillard has handed Abbott an electoral gift. On the other hand, Abbott’s negatives remain high.

People would like to hear what Abbott is for rather than against. The counter-punching Abbott may be effective on the stump, but his style also tends to overwhelm Coalition policy messages such as Treasury spokesman
Joe Hockey
’s good idea this week of using “case officers" to get people on long-term welfare back to work. Despite historically low levels of unemployment, Australia has an unacceptably high rate of long-term unemployed. Liberal policy formulation is the responsibility of Finance spokesman
Andrew Robb
(Robb tells the Weekend Financial Review that a lot is going on behind the scenes), in conjunction with the Menzies Research Centre, the party’s think tank. What policy formulators are grappling with is a narrative for the post-John Howard era.

So far little that is definitive has emerged, which leaves the impression the party is trapped between the neo-liberalism of the early Howard period and the later sluggish phase. This is when the Coalition ran out of reformist steam, dragged down by the ill-starred Work Choices initiative and captive of Howard’s cossetting of the middle class in the form of middle-class welfare, something to which Abbott himself appears addicted.

In other words, the party is drifting – which is not to say that Liberal thinkers like John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs and Julian Leeser at the Menzies Centre are not canvassing ideas via roundtables and position papers. But times are hardly propitious for bold initiatives, which is unfortunate given the challenges facing the country from lagging productivity gains to a “China will always provide" mentality that is breeding a dangerous complacency.

China may not “always provide". That moment may be closer than we think. In the meantime, people like Greg Hunt should be given credit for at least attempting to focus on a future separate from the daily cut and thrust.

His Monday talk was the first of a five-part series in which he’ll also discuss economic liberalism, climate change, building a better society and preparing for Asia 2030.